Subscription-based CLA model

Hey Todd,

The advisor I met with on Friday advised me to set up a subscription model for liability advice, charging clients $150 a month. If only 300 of my 1600 clients decided to do that, that would be $45,000 per month.

 My head has been spinning over the weekend with the price of regret—

  • spending 17 years of months chasing a 1% commission on the loan amount, and only if I did a great job, offered great terms, and maintained the client and partner relationship for 5-7 years, may have a chance to earn another commission…

  • versus using this advice to earn consistent income which allows me to provide even better advice and service to a more focused group of clients

I wish I had applied my gifts and talents to something that would annuitize years ago instead of competing for a great next month every month.

Have you or any CLA grads ever set up any kind of subscription model for the business?

Here’s a few ideas I came up with on how to structure this:

B2C: Using social media and funnels to establish a client-centric liability review value, similar to Rocket Mortgage’s B2C strategy of their subscription eliminating app.

My purchase Real Estate clients pay: This seems like it may be a harder transition to make, yet they already know, like, and trust me.

Advisors’ Clients pay: Maybe even having the clients of partner advisors pay an annual fee for an additional liability management service? This would require partner advisors to be completely on board with the strategy and me.

Advisors pay: Maybe asking Advisor partners to pay this and validate our value to THEM instead of directly to the client? I could maybe build this out with a “free trial for 12 months and then we meet to see the value it monetized for you and discuss ongoing terms” model.

Enterprise Advising Firms pay: This would involve setting up enterprise-level systems to educate advisors, integrate liability review into their flows, and monitor/track results of the system.

SAAS: Creating a software that is the value-creation engine for liability review or LAG, and advisors or clients could subscribe to the software. So far, my 1-2 private investments in startup SAAS have take much more money and time to scale than I anticipated, so this would be my last choice, although there may be a way to use AI efficiencies to code an app quickly and efficiently.

 

I get the feeling you have done probably all of these strategies a few times before and may have some advice on how to approach something like this.

If you could take your experience, knowledge, advice, and trusted relationships and convert them into a recurring income stream, how would you do it?

Thanks in advance—